Harvey & Thompson (H&T) is the UK’s largest pawnbroker and one of the largest retailers of high-quality pre-owned and new jewellery and watches. The company has built and maintained its reputation over more than 120 years, continuously evolving to meet the needs of its customers both on the high street (where it has been a constant presence since 1897) and online.

Personalizing customer engagement to boost sales

The importance of having an effective digital strategy is highlighted in a recent report that online sales were responsible for 30% of jewellery sales in the UK in 2023.

Buying any piece of jewellery or timepiece is a highly personal decision. H&T wanted to replace its ‘linear’ approach to reaching out to customers via email with personalized content that would reflect each customer’s area of interest. In taking this new approach, with the help of the Dotdigital personalization platform, H&T was able to attribute an impressive £151,843 in new sales, within just 10 weeks of implementation.

Alicja Dela, at H&T, explains: “Some people visit our website looking for a specific premium brand or model of watch, whilst others are looking for a specific item of jewellery, gold or coins. We wanted to be able to personalize the messages we send to them, to improve how they experience our brand and increase their propensity to buy.” Alicja adds: “The results have exceeded our expectations, and we are working on plans to expand how we use the platform.”

Optimizing cart abandonment strategy with Dotdigital

The project focused on H&T’s cart abandonment email strategy, using Dotdigital to automatically send a personalized email to every customer who places items in their shopping basket but leaves before completing the transaction.

Working with Dotdigital’s Professional Services team, H&T has optimized every element of the strategy, from the design of each email to controlling the timing and frequency of customer engagement, based on their pre-defined criteria. The Professional Services experts built on-brand email templates for each product category – watches, jewellery, coins, and gold bars.

Alicja commented: “With Dotdigital’s capability, we were able to personalize each email with banner imagery and details of products still in the customer’s shopping basket. What’s more, we also have total control over the timing and frequency of when the email will be sent.”

The timeliness of abandonment emails is vital as items such as watches and jewellery are often purchased for birthdays, anniversaries, engagements, etc.

H&T wanted to ensure that they engaged proactively, in a way that would be received positively by the customer, without sending disproportionate volumes of emails to a customer. To avoid this, H&T can manage the frequency of emails by setting rules within the Dotdigital platform. Alicja explains: “We tailor the number of emails a customer is sent based on product value, so someone interested in a premium watch will receive a multi-stage campaign, which differs from those looking for lower value children’s jewellery, for example.”

Dotdigital’s functionality is helping us to replicate the personal service for which H&T has built its reputation on in-store for more than 120 years, in the digital world.

Alicja Dela, Harvey & Thompson

Impressive sales growth and future expansion plans

Such has been the impact of the new personalized cart abandonment emails that H&T not only recorded impressive sales growth that it can directly attribute to the new strategy, but the company is also achieving higher conversion rates, almost double the typical performance in the UK retail sector.

Motivated by the impressive revenue growth and conversions, H&T is exploring opportunities to expand its use of Dotdigital. “The next step is to extend the programme to connect with our online window shoppers. We want to send them timely and relevant emails about the products they expressed an interest in, as well as notify them when items are back in stock.” Alicja concludes: “Dotdigital’s functionality is helping us to replicate the personal service for which H&T has built its reputation in-store for more than 120 years, in the digital world.”

Since launching in 2009, ergoPouch products are now stocked in retailers in 45 countries worldwide, with online stores in AU, US, and UK. ergoPouch partnered with Dotdigital in 2020 to align the brand’s rapid rate of customer growth with elevated marketing offerings involving personalization and automation. With a focus on customer experience, the brand has achieved incredible growth through marketing automation programs.

ergoPouch grew its customer base significantly during a period of immense growth. The brand had a remarkable increase in the data of purchases and customers, and wanted to maximize the experience of these customers through more personalized and engaging content. ergoPouch’s previous platform was holding the brand back from creating meaningful and intelligent campaigns. When partnering with Dotdigital, ergoPouch had the goal of uplifting its overall marketing programs to match the rapid growth of customer expectations and provide a more relevant customer and brand experience to busy and sleep-deprived parents.

Scalability, automation, and flexibility were an important part of ergoPouch’s business growth plan. A core part of the brand’s marketing challenge was to segment its growing customer database and produce personalized communications. The brand wanted to encourage loyalty in its highly engaged shoppers and encourage one-time shoppers to return in order to build a community of retained customers.

Lapsed customer program

When a business grows in size, naturally, it also sees an increase in lapsed customers. These are the customers who once made a purchase but do not return to make another purchase after a certain time period. This segment can be of high-value for an ecommerce business if targeted correctly with personalized communications. ergoPouch created a program specifically designed to re-engage with past customers. Across a two-part campaign, the brand encouraged shoppers to return by offering a $10 coupon for their next order.

New subscriber welcome campaign

Capitalizing on key moments in the shopping experience was critical to the new subscriber welcome campaign. ergoPouch designed the campaign to immediately deliver a unique $15 discount code in real-time following a subscription signup. This was a triggered automation campaign using personalization and the power of immediacy to create a seamless first impression of the business.

Results from the campaign

Results for the lapsed customer campaign were exponentially boosted when ergoPouch reduced the time period for lapsed customers from 180 days to 90 days. This allowed the brand to focus on customers who were more likely to make a purchase and led to significant ROI growth. By implementing multiple touchpoints in marketing campaigns, ergoPouch was able to achieve extraordinary results, achieving $1.44K in revenue from campaigns in the last 6 months. The campaigns exceeded industry standards by 10% with an outstanding open and click-to-open rate. This particular campaign achieved a stellar 44% open rate.

Looking ahead

With shopping habits changing and cross-channel experiences a natural part of the customer journey, ergoPouch is planning to focus on determining how online campaign engagement translates into offline purchases made in physical stores.

Immediacy is key to the likelihood a customer will make a purchase

With the welcome campaign, ergoPouch leverages the immediacy of the customer’s intention and interest in the brand by offering a personalized voucher for a shopper’s next purchase. Sending email communications helped increase revenue by highlighting the value of the brand for shoppers, in addition to the experience on the website.

Assess the threshold of recency of which lapsed time intersects with maximum revenue generated.

It’s no secret that warmer customers are more likely to repurchase from a brand. This was no different for ergoPouch, the brand saw an immediate uplift in revenue after reducing the lapsed time threshold from 180 days to 90 days. For brands to succeed, it’s important to test the threshold of recency before reaching the point of diminishing returns to ensure maximum success from lapsed customer campaigns.

Overcoming a stagnant customer database

Kissed Earth faced two key challenges – lack of personalized campaigns and a stagnant customer database that resulted in the team overserving existing customers. It also led to a lower conversion rate and customer engagement. In response, the brand partnered with Dotdigital to integrate automated email marketing campaigns to drive better database management, re-engagement, segmentation, and personalization.

Leveraging Dotdigital for personalized experiences and cross-channel optimization

The partnership saw Kissed Earth use Dotdigital’s expertise to host and run its replenishment campaigns. With the help of Dotdigital, the team was able to tap into key data points and understand the shopping behavior better. Building personalized replenishment programs per SKU enabled the brand to send timely reminders to customers based on their re-purchase frequency of the products. Furthermore, Shopify order insights provided detailed information on repeat customers for the Cleanse SKU, which helped analyze, segment, and create tailored experiences.

“Before Dotdigital, our digital marketing initiatives were re-marketing and Dynamic Product Ads (DPAs). With Dotdigital’s cross-channel platform, we can now reallocate our DPAs ad spends to other channels, maximizing the spend and customer reach,” said Amy Goodsell, Head of Marketing at Kissed Earth. “This has allowed us to grow and reach new audiences without losing any existing purchasers, resulting in database growth and higher customer retention,” added Amy.

With a significant focus on email marketing as the primary re-targeting channel, Kissed Earth also uses Dotdigital’s Google ads and Facebook audience channels for database growth and amplifying its re-targeting efforts. The audience sharing has allowed the team to build a full-funnel sales approach, reaching customers at different stages of the buying journey. The audience-based targeting helps exclude regular customers or site visitors from being targeted with ads before it’s necessary, to avoid redundancy.

For example, as part of the re-engagement strategy, the team targets customers, who have ordered the Cleanse product more than four months ago but haven’t placed another order, with a triggered reminder email. If the customer doesn’t engage with the email or place an order, they are re-targeted using Dotdigital’s feed into Facebook and Google, reminding them of their next purchase.

With Dotdigital’s cross-channel platform, we can now reallocate our DPAs ad spends to other channels, maximizing the spend and customer reach.

Amy Goodsell, Head of Marketing at Kissed Earth

Skyrocketing growth with optimized Dotdigital campaigns

The brand witnessed a 30% increase in database growth year-on-year and recorded a customer retention rate of 61% for FY22. The replenishment email campaigns continue to be effective, logging in excellent engagement rates. While the Brilliance SKU saw a 28% open rate and 15% click-to-open rate (CTR), the Cleanse SKU clocked in a 29% open rate and 10% CTR. Cleanse has also become one of the top-performing single SKUs and is growing month on month with a re-purchase rate of 22%.

New product launches, inclusivity focus, and global expansion into USA and southeast Asia markets

The year ahead will see Kissed Earth launch some exciting new products to the range, taking self-care to the next level and continuing its all-natural approach to even more of its customers’ daily routines. The consumers can expect new convenience (and environmentally conscious) formats for their best-loved products to ensure collagen lovers never miss a day of their Brilliance or Luminous as they take advantage of open borders and head back into the world!

Marketing plans for FY23 will focus on inclusivity. Kissed Earth will prove it is more than a beauty brand, demonstrating that collagen supplementation and a preventative skincare routine are as beneficial for men as women. Global expansion is also on the horizon as Kissed Earth focuses on the USA and Southeast Asia markets, so look out for Kissed Earth wherever you are!

CostumeBox was launched in 2007 by Nikki Yeaman and Roma Burke with a range of just 400 costumes. The company has since grown to offer an unmatched range of more than 20,000 different products, offering a comprehensive range of fancy-dress costumes, accessories, audio visual equipment, party décor and supplies and more! To date, CostumeBox has dispatched more than 3 million costumes and party supplies to happy customers worldwide, making it easy, fun and convenient to shop anywhere, anytime.

Creating a strategy to engage customers and drive sales

CostumeBox faced two key challenges. There was a large segment of unengaged contacts, and a lack of automated email engagement and re-engagement programs. Therefore, the brand needed to implement a robust marketing strategy to entice both unengaged customers and non-customers to engage and make a purchase.

Utlizing Dotdigital’s automation and segmentation capabilities

Since partnering with Dotdigital, CostumeBox has targeted customers with relevant content through the right channels. Dotdigital’s automation and segmentation capabilities made it the perfect fit, enabling the client to better segment and understand lead demographics.

The team devised a well thought-out and meticulously-crafted Halloween re-engagement strategy to drive engagement. The first leg of the program involved excluding the unengaged/inactive contacts from standard sends to avoid redundancy. Next, the customers who engaged with the brand or made a purchase were taken out of the re-engagement program and targeted with regular marketing communications. Lastly, for those who engaged but did not purchase, a reminder was sent to promote urgency and redeem a unique special discount, enticing them to buy.

“Dotdigital has eased the entire process for the team, right from sending emails to building customer lists, segmenting customers based on their brand engagement frequency, tracking data from direct emails and crafting and scheduling personalized triggered campaigns,” said Nikki Yeaman, Co-Founder and CEO at CostumeBox.

In 2020, the brand successfully migrated ecommerce platforms to Shopify using MindArc and Dotdigital expertise. Taking personalization to the next level, CostumeBox implemented a successful loyalty program using loyalty platform, Smile. The team customized Dotdigital campaign headers for customers showcasing Smile loyalty points redeemed on the website via dynamic content blocks. Contacts who hadn’t registered for the loyalty program saw a call-to-action button with joining benefits.

Additionally, the brand implemented abandon cart functionality to expand the reach of the default Shopify abandoned checkout, as well as an extended welcome program. Furthermore, CostumeBox introduced product recommendations, using the ‘bestseller’ block for standard seasonal campaigns.

“We’ve had great success with our re-engagement programs resulting in increased customer engagement, especially during Halloween 2021,” said Nikki.

Dotdigital has helped us approach customers with highly tailored campaigns such as welcome, abandoned cart and loyalty programs that have performed exceptionally.

Nikki Yeaman, Co-Founder and CEO at CostumeBox

Increase in engagement and automation revenue

CostumeBox witnessed a 38% increase in engagement from the reminder campaign, which was sent to contacts who opened the first email but did not purchase. 11% of customers who opened the Halloween 2021 re-engagement program, purchased during or after the program, with overall engagement increasing by 28% compared to the same period in 2020. The Halloween campaign recorded 4.2% in total email revenue, while overall automation revenue across campaigns stood at 28%.

Strengthening customer relationships with a post-purchase journey

Continuing its customer-centric approach and personalization journey, CostumeBox intends to focus on the post-purchase journey, harness customer reviews to drive traffic, attract new customers, and build lifelong loyalty. The company recently also launched ENCORE – a marketplace for re-selling CostumeBox pre-loved items, something the team has been working tirelessly on behind the scenes.

The marketplace will allow customers to feature their pre-loved costumes online and sell them directly to other CostumeBox customers, as well as buy from others in the community. The team is also currently working on exciting 2022 Easter campaigns.

Strategy to personalize marketing and re-engage dormant customers

Le Col’s main aim was to maximize the most important sales period of the year, driving success in the run up to the Black Friday weekend and beyond. Part of this initiative would include increasing the membership of Le Col’s loyalty program, ‘Rewards for Riding’. To engage audiences, the team wanted to speak directly to its customers – using personalization and dynamic content based on contact information. Plus, there would be a concerted effort to re-engage dormant contacts, bringing them back into the brand fold.

Customized Black Friday offers with Dotdigital’s personalization features

Using Dotdigital’s marketing automation tool, the team set up an automated journey from November 20th to 30th consisting of 10 daily deal offers. Taking a different approach to loyalty members, these customers enjoyed early access to all Black Friday daily deals at once, 48 hours before their release to the general public. What’s more, Dotdigital’s personalization features and integration with Shopify allowed Le Col to serve recipients different creative and content based on:

• Loyalty Program: Member and Non Member
• Gender: Male and Female
• Language: French, German, and English
• Currency: USD, EU, and GBP

One email for loyalty members stood out from the crowd – generating a spectacular 64% open rate.

Unprecedented Black Friday success with Dotdigital’s personalized campaigns

The campaign was a huge success, and by far Le Col’s most impressive Black Friday performance. The team drove an average open rate of 30%+ across the period, increasing its loyalty base at the same time by 8%. In email revenue terms it was the highest performing Black Friday campaign ever: with a 398% year-on-year revenue lift. The content and creative resonated with existing customers too; repeat customer purchases increased by 20% versus a similar period last year. One email for loyalty members stood out from the crowd – generating a spectacular 64% open rate and 67% click-to-open rate. Plus, email testing played a big part in the re-engagement of 7,500 dormant contacts, who re-opened for the first time in over a year.

Listed as the number one online bestselling car mat in Malaysia since 2016, TRAPO’s mission is to encourage a safe, hygienic, and comfortable driving experience for drivers through its innovative and reasonably priced car accessories. The brand provides a full tailor fit car mat solution for each car model, integrated with their 4.0 manufacturing model to provide a seamless online to offline experience.

Looking for a centralized marketing automation program to integrate into existing tech stack

In response to the growing customer base and shifting marketplace, TRAPO needed to move from the existing complex ecommerce website to a much simpler, centralized and personalized system. Additionally, the company was also on the lookout for a platform that would easily sync with all the other marketing tools they had in place to better streamline the process.

As a result, TRAPO decided to implement a marketing automation platform to help them deliver an enhanced personalized customer experience and increase profits.

Ultizing Dotdigital tools for personalized campaigns

Over the last 12 months, TRAPO has been utilizing the Dotdigital platform to run personalization, automation, and retargeting marketing campaigns. With the help of Dotdigital, the brand was able to study and map their customers’ journey by implementing different automation programs such as welcome, thank you, and abandoned cart series.

“The challenge for us as a business was the delivery of consistent and constant customer engagement. And with the industry becoming increasingly competitive, the key is to remain relevant and keep the audience engaged. However, with Dotdigital on board, we were able to achieve that competitive edge with our creative and tailormade campaigns,” said Ionut Danifeld, Chief Marketing Officer at TRAPO Asia.

Since coming on board with Dotdigital, TRAPO witnessed its revenue triple and saw an increase in the average order value by 6.5 percent year on year.

Impressive growth with Dotdigital tripling revenue and boosting order value through automated retargeting

Since coming on board with Dotdigital, TRAPO witnessed its revenue triple and saw an increase in the average order value by 6.5 percent year on year. Furthermore, the company is using Dotdigital’s automation solutions to run triggered re-engagement campaigns. This has allowed the brand to retarget and capitalize on lapsed customers through abandoned cart programs, yielding higher engagement rates. Recently, the campaign has expanded from email retargeting to other channels such as social and Google retargeting.